Autonomy & decisions·Overview
The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking
Lee i in., CHI 2025 (Microsoft Research + Carnegie Mellon)
The more you trust the machine, the less you think for yourself.
Researchers at Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon surveyed 319 knowledge workers about 936 real situations in which they used generative AI. The question was not whether AI helps, but when a person engages their own critical thinking alongside it and when they let it go.
The result is clear and runs both ways. The more someone trusts the AI output, the less often they check it and the less they think for themselves. The higher their confidence in their own competence, the more they think critically — though it feels like more effort. Critical thinking itself shifts: from producing solutions to verifying someone else’s, from reasoning to overseeing the task.
The study concerns work, but the mechanism is the same when we ask AI about personal matters: we hand judgement to whoever we trust. The authors call for tools that surface reliability instead of masking it. Limitation: the data are self-reported, not measured behaviour.
From the original
„Higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking.”
Higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking.
- Year
- 2025
- Original language
- EN
- Source
- Lee i in., CHI 2025 (Microsoft Research + Carnegie Mellon)
An overview in the EPIQ team’s own words, not a translation. The full text remains with the publisher — link below. Quotations are short, verbatim and attributed, within the right of quotation.